Comment by Funes-
6 years ago
If I had to bet on personal computers' and other devices' future, I would say that some years down the line--not many--only a barebones system will run on them so they can connect to an OS delivered through a cloud service. The turning point will be Google Stadia's success.
As much as I would prefer local-first as well as offline-first approaches, I reckon that the future will only have a place on the fringes for them.
The problem is to achieve acceptable quality of service for an online cloud OS service with all the responsive UIs and expected reliability, everything has to be done locally-first either way, using approaches like CRDTs. And even more so for Google, because their level of service quality delivered over public internet is nowhere near acceptable for an OS and will never be. But, of course, they can still offer locally-first OS as a service, not giving users any control.